Third- and fourth-year medical students from Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q) recently had the opportunity to participate in the second iteration of an in-demand elective on telehealth, further demonstrating the growing importance of remote, technology-driven patient care.
Titled Telehealth and Tele Simulation Clinical Elective, the two-week online elective was held in collaboration with the Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Virtual Care (CVC) in New York.
The course was designed to encourage medical students to learn and practice conducting remote interprofessional simulated patient evaluations with the aid of diverse technologies, emphasising the impact of telehealth, telemedicine and technologies on provider-to-provider and provider-to-patient communication and interpersonal skills.
The elective enables students to
- Describe and differentiate between telehealth and telemedicine
- Define and apply principles of interprofessional education and collaborative practice
- Understand and assess the benefits and suitability of using augmented and mixed reality as emergent technologies
- Conduct virtual video patient encounters and interprofessional patient evaluations
- View examples of strategies used by telemedicine practitioners to evaluate and provide patient care
- Become familiar with the development of and challenges faced by different countries in delivering patient care through telehealth/telemedicine
In addition, students also learned about the importance of lighting, screen movement and presentation skills when conducting patient encounters, along with other logistical, ethical and legal considerations.
The course was sponsored by Dr Stella Major, associate professor of family medicine in clinical medicine and director of the Clinical Skills and Simulation Lab (CSSL) at WCM-Q.
According to Dr Major, the COVID-19 pandemic has taught them to be more mindful of spending time and to explore more effective ways of delivering and ensuring healthcare continuity.
I believe that the way forward is hybrid patient care. With this in mind, technology is now more central to our practice than ever before, and telehealth is increasingly becoming an important part of our future medical profession.
She said that telehealth is a tool that medical students will need to become familiar with – it will be as critical as teaching students how to use the stethoscope.
The elective was created during the COVID-19 pandemic, following the subsequent need to shift patient care online and to train students to use digital technology for healthcare delivery.
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